Cross-linguistic perceptual assimilation of American English /r/–/l/ by Korean speakers and Japanese speakers

Abstract

According to the Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM) [Best et al., JEP:HPP 14, 345–360 (1988)], the difficulties that second-language learners have in distinguishing non-native phoneme contrasts is predictable from the way learners assimilate the non-native sounds into their native phonological system. The present study examined Korean and Japanese adults’ perceptual assimilation of American English (AE) /r/–/l/ contrasts in first two experiments. In experiment 1 (assimilation task), subjects listened to nonsense AE words contrasting /r/ and /l/ in five syllabic positions, and chose one of the native orthographies displayed visually. In experiment 2 (rating task), they listened to the same nonsense words, and rated the ‘‘goodness-of-fit’’ of each stimulus to the presented native orthography on the scale from 1 (least fit) to 7 (best fit). Then, in experiment 3 (identification task), the ability of Korean and Japanese to identify both real AE words and nonsense words was measured, and a significant effect of position was found in both language groups. When the assimilation and rating data from experiments 1 and 2 were interpreted in terms of the PAM categories, the predicted levels of identification accuracy were in good agreement with the identification results in experiment 3.